Archive for November, 2011

Several years ago, I purchased at a local automotive swap meet / flea market, a pair of vintage 1928-31 Model A Ford headlights. Back in 1928, headlights used low light intensity incandescent light bulbs. This was fine for the day when vehicles didn’t travel very fast or were not in great numbers on our highways. Now it is best to be seen when you are driving not only at night time but during the day. So for safety sake, I would suggest using modern light bulbs in your custom car or hot rod. Headlights now offer improved lighting distances for night driving, and great visibility for being seen on the highway when driving in the day time. One of my main objectives in the build of my 1929 Model A Ford roadster is to use as many of the modern day safety features in the hot rod as possible.

As with most things when building a custom car or hot rod, you can buy whatever your heart desires as long as you have the funds. Another one of my goals in the hot rod is to complete the build as cheaply as possible. Now with that said, there is the time element. Whenever you forego the option of buying something and decide to fabricate it yourself, the time to finish the hot rod increases. For me, it is the challenge to create, fabricate, and develop as much as I possibly can. This is what will make my 1929 Ford hot rod roadster very unique from all of the others. Now let’s get to the actual headlight conversion.

Over the last number of years, I have bought and sold many cars, either in a complete form or parted them to pay for the 1929 Ford hot rod project. One of these cars was a 1991 Ford Mustang. I sold many parts from this car, kept several, including the headlights with the intention of converting the old Model A Ford headlights to halogen lighting. These sat around in the shop for a couple of years before I actually got around to this. Now that I am very close to having the 1929 Ford hot rod on the road, headlights are important.

The first step in my conversion process was to cut out the section that was used to contain and hold the halogen light bulbs. I used air cut off saw for this. Of course the friction from the cut off wheel created a bit of heat in the plastic head lamp housing resulting in the plastic to melt around the cut. This was not a problem for me, as I was intending to mount this roughed out bulb socket from the head lamp into my metal lathe and round it up. I suppose you could use the drill press and a two inch hole saw for this provided you had a safe way to hold the head lamp housing securely while drilling.

With the socket removed and turned round on the lathe, place the socket on the Model A Ford head light reflector. Using a pencil trace the socket outline. The Model A Ford headlight reflectors that came with my vintage headlight, were not in great shape. These were perfect for my experiment. One reflector was all dented and the other had no silver on it. This conversion will be the proto type for a much better set of reflectors later on.

Before I could enlarge the hole in the Model A Ford reflectors, the original headlight sockets needed to be removed. Using a pair of pliers, the sockets twisted off without any problems. The die grinder fitted with a variety to burrs. The socket hole was enlarged to the required diameter. To finish this step off, a larger grinding wheel in the die grinder was used to perfect the shape and diameter. I did notice that one of the Model A Ford reflectors had very brittle metal causing larger pieces to be torn away rather that ground away. This was a bit hair raising. The other reflector was easy to enlarge and did not have the same problem. I’m not sure why this happened as both reflectors were made of brass?

The modified 1991 Ford Mustang headlight sockets were then attached to the Model A Ford reflectors using only two #6 by 32, half inches screws.

In order for the halogen light bulbs to fit inside the vintage Ford headlights, the back side of the halogen bulb needed to be trimmed. The rear plastic portion of the bulb shielding the electrical terminal /plug needed to be trimmed even with the electrical terminals on the bulb. This is also necessary to allow soldering of wires to the terminals. With the terminals exposed, they now needed to be bent back 90 degrees. The original wiring plugs for the halogen light bulb was 16 awg, so I soldered new 16 awg wires to the halogen light bulb terminals. The wires are about 12 inches long. A plug will be made later on to attach the headlights to the hot rod.

Five minute epoxy was use to seal the terminals and the newly soldered wire connections on the bulb.

As an in term measure, I decided to paint the Model A Ford reflectors with a high heat silver paint that had decent reflective properties. These newly modified reflectors using halogen bulb will do till I replace the reflectors later on. As luck would have it, I found in the workshop two identical stainless steel mixing bowls that would make perfect reflectors in the Model A Ford headlights. As a future post, I will have a video, showing the entire process of making new headlight reflectors using parts from an old Ford Explorer and the stainless steel mixing bowls. Both of these conversions will only cost me my time and no out of pocket expense. I do intend to sell the first set I converted in the next while. These would be perfect for a daily driver or rat rod.

Well here we are into November and the snow is flying in areas close to our home and shop. This past summer has been an interesting one for me. Everything started out right on track with the usual hot rod building distractions. It was decided early on that we would have our home, yard, ponds, and gardens, on the local garden tour, sponsored by the horticultural society. That was fine, since I normally just look after grass cutting and occasional hedge trimming. My wife maintains the vast number of gardens, on our 1 acre property with our Victorian home built in 1868. Unfortunately, I developed a serious problem with my shoulder in late spring that really limited my level of physical work. This also affected my work on the computer, as it was simply too painful to use the mouse and keyboard not to mention numerous sleepless nights. Oh well, I just needed to adapt like the Borg on Star Trek. I took on the task of wiring the 1929 Ford roadster hot rod and a few other very light tasks. That did not stress the shoulder at all. I did manage to get all of the instrumentation installed and connected along with the wiring for the lighting 1929 Ford hot rod. Of course, nothing is simple when you build a hot rod. I decided to convert the old original 1930 – 31 Model A Ford headlights to halogen lighting. This worked out very well. This will have a separate post later on complete with pictures and video showing the entire process of the headlight modification / conversion.

Now I needed to place the alternator on the motor as part of the wiring project. Again, this was not simple, as I wanted the alternator to be mounted low on the 350 cubic inch motor of the 1929 Ford roadster hot rod. I was not able to use conventional motor pulleys for this since the engine was very close to the radiator and I was also using an electric water pump. To solve the problem, I machined an aluminum v-belt pulley on my very old Logan metal lathe. The pulley turned out perfect and will be mounted to the front of the engine. Up to this point, power steering was not an option due to the space issue. Having machined an engine pulley for the alternator, I revisited idea of adding the power steering pump to the engine. Sometime ago I sold a power steering pump to my friend Jim another member of the Forest City Street Rods club. Jim wanted to use this on his 1937 Chevrolet street rod. Unfortunately Jim was not able to stop a leak on the oil reservoir and abandoned the GM type II power steering pump. I decided to give the pump another attempt, only this time I had an aluminum bracket and pulley for the power steering pump. The bracket for the power steering pump ended up getting a shave and trim and used for the alternator instead. I then fabricated another bracket using one inch aluminum blocks. To stop the reservoir leak problem, I machined on the lathe an aluminum press fit adapter to allow for a remote location of the reservoir tank for the power steering pump. Now that I was able to mount the power steering pump on the engine without any clearance problem, a second engine pulley was made. Having made one already, the second one was easy to make. During this process of making pulleys and brackets I realized that a milling machine would make life so much easier not to mention a metal lathe that was not worn out.

A few weeks after fabricating the new pulleys, mounts for the power steering pump and alternator that a friend provided me with a lead for some machine shop equipment. As a result of this lead, I am now the proud owner of a decent metal lathe and a Bridgeport style vertical knee milling machine. The old Logan lathe was sold and a new machine shop room was added to the workshop of 1929fordhotrod.com.

Finally, a number of weeks ago, 1929fordhotrod.com/johnsblog had an unfortunate accident and went down causing a service interruption. The process of restoring the website was a tedious one. Now that the site is back up, a few more tweaks need to be made and then more information about my build of the 1929 Ford Model A roadster hot rod will start rolling out again. No pun intended. There will be lots of information, from wiring a hot rod, fuel gauge calibration, gauges, halogen light conversion, machining parts, to general hot rod building ideas. Of course I will include many pictures, and video. It should be an exciting winter season in the shop of 1929fordhotrod.com.